The words hit me like a cannonball to the gut. I took two steps backwards, sat on the couch, and started babbling. “A-affair? You mean…you don’t mean while you were married to Mom. You don’t mean…” I chuckled. “You don’t mean when Mom was alive.”
“Yes.”
A breath hissed out of me and I doubled over, face in my hands. In that moment, I felt more like a child than a man, wanting to curl up and weep. “How could you? How could you do that?”
“I’m sorry. I never wanted you to know this. But since your mother died the guilt has been eating me up, and you just kept badgering me and…shit. I guess I’m relieved it’s out there now.”
I looked up, and the color was returning to my father’s face. He sank back into the chair, closing his eyes with a sigh like a weight had been lifted off him. “So pleased to help relieve your conscience,” I said. “No really, as long as you feel better.” I stood and pointed at him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Mom did everything for you. She loved you! And trust me, that’s not easy to do!”
“I am sorry if this hurts you.”
“Of course it hurts me. It’s Mom! Did she know?”
“No. And I broke it off permanently when your mother died. I realized how…what an awful husband I’d been.”
“Permanently… How long was this shit going on?”
“It was off and on. It wasn’t constant.”
“Like weeks? Months?”
His gaze shifted away from me. “Years.”
A terrible, revolting thought began to slither its way into my brain, and I panicked. “Wait…he’s not my brother, is he? Orion’s not—”
“No!” He stood, wincing and rubbing his knee. “Orion was a kid when I met him. And technically, it was his foster mother. So no, Kurt, you’re my only son.”
“Lucky me,” I muttered. “I think it’s time for me to go.”
“Wait. Please don’t leave like this, Squirt. Not like this.”
“Don’t call me that right now.”
“Kurt please. I think we should probably…I don’t know. Talk about this some more?”
“Not now. I need to go process this, and I need to do it away from you.”
“I’m sorry.”
He reached out and patted my arm, and now that he’d removed the overshirt, I saw that both his elbows had yellowing bruises. Despite how much I wanted to punch him right now, concern welled up in me, and I grabbed his wrist. “What happened to your elbows? Did you fall again?”
He pulled out of my grasp. “It’s nothing.” Walking to the chair, he grabbed his shirt and slipped it on.
“It’s not nothing. Where did you fall? The seawall again?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Down the caves.”
“The caves? At the hillocks?”
“Uh huh.”
“Why the hell were you in the caves? You shouldn’t be hiking down there with your knee all fucked up, some of those rock trails are treacherous.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He walked to the window and looked out at the sea.
I thought about his buddies, Skip and Henry, the ones he was always in the pub with. “Were you drinking? Did your friends talk you into going down the caves?” I slapped my forehead. “I sound like I’m talking to my kids.”
“I went on my own.”
“Why?”
“Orion said that once someone dies, they know everything. I needed to apologize to your mother.” His voice caught. “She knows now. She knows what I did now that she’s dead.”
I stared at his back, stunned at what I was hearing. “What are you talking about? Dad, you don’t believe in that shit, you never have.” He shrugged, silent. I walked toward him. “Dad, come on. You can’t really see the faces of loved ones in the wishing pools, that’s all a crock, cooked up by locals to bring in more tourists. Come on, you know this.”
“I know.” He sighed and faced me, cracking a small smile even as his eyes glossed up. “It didn’t work, at any rate. Nothing down there but bat shit. Guess that’s apt, considering I was acting batshit by going down there.”
A laugh whispered out of me, and I hated that I couldn’t fully hold onto my anger. I wanted to hate him for his betrayal. But he was still my father, and he was clearly in unprecedented emotional pain, far more than I realized. I forced my own emotions down a few notches and lowered my voice. “Of course it didn’t work. You didn’t actually think you’d see Mom’s ghost, did you?”
“I guess not. Suppose it’s the grief and the guilt getting to me. I was looking for a confessional. Regret can make a man want to change the way he thinks about things.”
Right. That, and hanging around someone who fills your head with bullshit. Orion, that fucker. What kind of a person says something like that to a grieving man? Telling him my mom knows everything now. That was fucking cruel, no two ways about it.
And now my aging father was hiking down to the caves with his bad knee and falling down. “I don’t think you should let Orion help you out anymore,” I said. “If you need things done, you call me. Is that clear?”
Looking pained, he turned away. “Oh, he’s not going to like that. He won’t respond well. I’m kind of a father figure to him.”
“You’re not his father! You’re my father.”
He flinched.
“I’m sorry, that sounded childish, but do you really think Mom would want you spending time with the son of that—”
“Don’t.” He spun around, pointing at me. “Do not speak like that, Kurt. I won’t have it.”
“Okay.” I took a step back, raising my hands. “Look, I’m gonna go before I say something I’ll regret. But I’ll…I’ll check in on you soon.”
His posture relaxed with palpable relief. Maybe he thought I was going to disown him and never speak to him again. “Please don’t tell your sisters. Please, Squirt.”
I rubbed my temples, a headache starting. “I won’t tell Gwen and Allison, don’t worry.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I just don’t want them to have to feel the way I do right now.”
That said, I left his house, a lump trying to rise in my throat. I might not have always gotten along with my father, but I’d always respected him. Losing that was breaking my heart, and knowing he betrayed my mother made me want to vomit.
The sky was dark with clouds outside, the air heavy with the sulfur scent of impending rain. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. As I looked up at the gray sky, I thought of what Orion said about me having a filthy, Pigpen aura. Suddenly I could almost feel it, something dark and unclean, blotting out the past I thought I knew. The father I thought I knew. There was a grief to it, a loss, almost like my father had died. I hadn’t lost my father. But I’d lost my idea of who he was.
I began walking home, and when the sky opened up and the rain came, I slowed my pace. I wanted it to rain on me. I wanted to be cleansed. But when the sky flashed bright followed by a clap of thunder so loud I nearly jumped out of my skin, I decided I’d been cleansed quite enough, and broke into a jog.